Wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs), (e.g., smartphones and other persistently connected wireless devices), may pose a significant data communication and signaling burden on modern wireless communication networks when a variety of applications running on the WTRUs frequently exchange a few bytes of data, (i.e., “sip” data). These applications may be used to support Web browsing, email, weather and/or news updates, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), (e.g., Skype), social networking (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), geographic services (e.g., foursquare), online games, and messaging (e.g., short message service (SMS) and instant messaging).
Social networking applications such as foursquare may generate status update messages upon geographic position changes, (e.g., driving from home to work or meeting friends for dinner). Social networking servers may push content and presence update messages of the subscriber's friends to the applications running on the WTRUs, (e.g., Facebook may send a notice when your friend tags you on a picture or signs off from the service). The signaling rate of such content and presence update messages may range from sporadic to periodic up to every 60 seconds through each day. These messages may generate very little data traffic although they may generate a tremendous amount of signaling traffic while also impacting the battery life of the WTRUs. Many of these applications may maintain this alert state while being dormant by way of “keep-alive” messages, which may occur any time an application is active, which is a likely situation since many applications launch when a WTRU is turned on and remain active. Thus, these messages may be generated twenty-four hours a day and generally without the knowledge of the user and when the WTRU is seemingly not being used.